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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is kin selection?

2. How many children per parent would families need to have for the world's population to reach 12.5 billion by 2050?

3. What is the traditional view of art?

4. How does Edmund Wilson define ethics?

5. Where can integrity be attained, according to Wilson?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is volitional evolution, and what does Wilson say are its effects?

2. What is the difference between nurturists and hereditarians in describing how culture evolves?

3. How do the senses function as epi-genetic rules?

4. In what way are epi-genetic rules cross-cultural?

5. What social problems does Wilson say are caused by failures in social sciences?

6. What does Wilson say the liberal arts should address?

7. What does Wilson say is the relationship between human genetics and the development of culture?

8. How does Wilson describe the universality of art?

9. What is the purpose of the social sciences, and how does Wilson distinguish the social sciences from the physical social sciences?

10. What is the fundamental assumption behind consilience?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How would you respond to a reviewer who wrote that after Wilson leaves his discussion of biology and reductionism, which were his fields of training, he loses authority, and ventures into fields he is not expert in, where his ideas about art and religion are off-base, and his argument about objectivity is tautological. Is this a fair critique?

Essay Topic 2

What difference is there between how individuals experience consilience and how societies experience consilience? Is the best audience for 'Consilience' really a society, or are there uses for consilience in individual lives? Who do you have to be to 'use' consilience? Who is Wilson's audience?

Essay Topic 3

What would consilience look like if it were accomplished? Would it expand or limit scientific experimentation? Would it encourage or suppress dissenting views? Would it be totalitarian or fractious?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 775 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample